Top Trump Adviser: Non-Rich Congressmen “Are F--king Jackasses”

The infamous Anthony Scaramucci, irrepressible Trump backer turned top White House adviser, hails from Wall Street, where his fund of funds business was a vehicle for schmoozing with the world’s most rich and powerful. Wall Street, of course, is filled with egos as big as the paychecks, where dick-measuring is as much a part of the culture as having an unhealthy attachment to one’s Bloomberg terminal. So it’s not that Scaramucci, a.k.a. “the Mooch,” isn’t used to self-importance. It’s just that when it’s coming from the relative indigents of the political world, it strikes him as totally pathetic.

The “thing I have learned about these people in Washington,” Scaramucci told New York’sJessica Pressler, “is they have no money. So what happens when they have no fucking money is they write about what seat they are in and what the title is. Fucking congressmen act like that. They are fucking jackasses.”

Scaramucci has a plan for winning over the pitiful wretches, however. “Do you know how many congressional liaisons we are going to have? I don’t either, but I told Pence it should be four times whatever Obama had,” he continued. “I don’t know how many he had, but I’m telling you that didn’t work out. I’m telling you if you want to decrease the government, you gotta increase it in certain ways.”

Then he looked at Pressler and said, really, “How old are you? You look good. No lines on your face. What are you, a Sagittarius?”

Trump plans to cut regulations, big league . . .

As you might already know, Donald Trump hates regulation almost as much as he hates nuance and restraint. During his transition, he named corporate raider Carl Icahn a “special adviser” on regulatory matters and on Monday declared that he plans to slash regulations by 75 percent or “maybe more.” Naturally, the president did not elaborate on which rules he plans to cut, but presumably they’ll include the ones affecting Icahn’s investments.

“There will be no country that’s going to be faster, better, more fair,” Mr. Trump said. He promised incentives for businesses that produce and hire in the U.S. but warned the leaders, “if you go to another country . . . we are going to be imposing a very major border tax.”

Don vs. China

Citigroup has weighed in on the brewing cross-Pacific conflagration and predicts things are going to get pretty tense! Which is generally what happens when a U.S. president violates decades of diplomatic protocol so that he can take a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan and then, in the course of saying sorry, he’s not sorry, calls China “currency manipulators,” and threatens a trade war. Per Bloomberg:

“There are growing signs that the Trump administration is heading for antagonistic relations with China,” the bank said in a report that examined how commodities including metals and farm goods may fare in the upcoming lunar year. While the bank stuck with its view that a trade war could be avoided, it did anticipate “increasing trade frictions” between the two.

“We are more likely to see the U.S. aggressively targeting China in sectors where the U.S. runs a large deficit with China or with significant SOE presence,” Citigroup said, using initials for state-owned enterprises. China has options to react, including bringing cases to the World Trade Organization, using countervailing measures and possibly banning exports of strategically important commodities such as rare earths, it said.

Wells Fargo can’t stop being terrible

Back in September, Wells Fargo admitted to opening more than 2 million accounts in customers’ names, and subsequently attempted to throw low-level employees under the bus for the whole scandal, which largely occurred because management had put absurd sales goals in place that no one would actually be able to meet. In response to senior execs trying to claim the affair was just a bunch of bad apples, numerous employees came forward to allege that, actually, they had tried to raise ethical complaints about what they saw going on at the bank and were subsequently fired. Wells Fargo, naturally, was shocked,shocked at said claims. Now, though, it’s admitted that O.K., yeah, that did happen. But don’t worry, people are “looking into it.” Per CNN Money:

Wells Fargo hired an unnamed third party to look into cases where employees were terminated within 12 months of calling the ethics line. The bank also investigated claims of retaliation from former employees who spoke to the media or to the bank itself following the fake account settlement last September. “A few cases out of the hundreds reviewed raised questions, and we are following up on each of them,” [C.E.O Tim Sloan] said in a speech broadcast to the bank’s more than 260,000 employees last Thursday.

Asked to clarify if that means there were signs of retaliation, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman told CNNMoney: “Yes, that is how I would read it.”

What IHOP in hell?

Exciting news for auto C.E.O.s! They get to eat breakfast with Trump tomorrow to share their idea for how they can work with the White House to “bring more jobs back to this industry.” If he doesn’t like them, they can probably look forward to some nasty, threatening tweets by lunch.

No! Not the deal fees!

The collapse of Aetna and Humana’s proposed $37 billion merger could have dire consequences for the little people that really matter:

Three banks advised on Aetna’s deal for its fellow insurer: Citigroup and Lazard advised Aetna, while Goldman Sachs worked for Humana. Each of the banks has already been paid some of their fees upfront, according to regulatory filings reviewed by the data provider Freeman & Company. But they will miss out on so much more if the two companies call off the deal in the face of the adverse court ruling.

Pope Francis has warned that rising populism—like, for instance, the kind that got Donald Trump elected—could lead to another Hitler. “Hitler didn't steal the power, his people voted for him, and then he destroyed his people," he said in an interview. (CNBC)